Majipoor.com: The Works of Robert Silverberg

Sadism

by Robert Silverberg

Publication history:

Blurb:

(from Lancer 1964)

LOVE IS PAIN...

There are sadists lurking the dark streets of every city in the world, waiting for the opportunity to commit unimaginable atrocities on innocent victims. But they are not monsters. They can be understood.

In the sadist, the desire to dominate becomes the desire to maim, to torture — to inflict pain. And this urge is inextricably linked with sexual desire.

(From the inside cover)

SADISM "... the instinct of destruction, of mastery, the will to power. A section of this instinct is placed directly in the service of the sexual function...this is true sadism"
— Sigmund Freud

SADISM Jack the Ripper, most infamous of all time, killed and mutilated at least nine prostitutes in London in the 1880's. The sixteenth-century Hungarian Countess Elisabeth Bathory kept girls and women chained in the dungeons below her castle and literally bathed in blood. The brutal murder and butchery of a six-year-old girl by William Heirens of Chicago shocked the nation in 1946...There have been many, many more.

THIS BOOK is a detailed history of sadism and sadists, but it is more than that. Here the reasons for such behavior are clinically laid bare in the light of modern science and the hopes for its detection and prevention in the future realistically appraised. It is a major and definitive work.

Acknowledgements: Robert Silverberg for cause, support, and cooperation;
Ken Seamon for graphics; Rodney Walters for books and info; Alvaro
Zinos-Amaro for comments and content; and all the fellow fans who have sent
encouragement, information, and translations.